WE here enter upon a new section of the Gospel. The Spirit of God sets before us, speaking now generally, two things: first, the unspeakable value of the Word of God, and more particularly of the Word of Jesus; secondly, as we shall see another time, the place and exceeding importance for the soul of prayer. But then there are many things to be considered in connection with each of these topics, of which we shall only now look at the first. There is a moral comparison between the two sisters who loved the Lord. She who chose the better portion was the one whose heart clung most to the, Word as a link between the soul and God. As we all know, it is by the Word of truth that any are begotten of God, for it is the seed of incorruptible life, that Word which liveth and abideth forever. But then it is much more than that. It is the means of growth, of cleansing the way, of enjoying God, and consequently of spiritual blessing day by day. This was made very apparent in the diffidence between Martha and Mary. They were sisters in the flesh, believers both of them, loved of Jesus. Nevertheless, difference there was; and the main cause and evidence of it between the two was the superior value that Mary had for the Word of Jesus. The Word of God has a formative power over the mind and affections, and she is proved to be the one who most prizes the Lord, and who most really and in the truest communion serves Him, who has the deepest value for His Word. This we find as a general principle elsewhere in Scripture (“This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments”) particularly in John 14:2323Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:23), “If a man love me, he will keep my word”; but here it comes out practically in the case of Martha and Mary. “A certain woman named Martha received him into her house.” She fully owned Him to be the Messiah. There was faith of God’s giving in Martha’s heart; but it saw no more in Him than simply the Messiah. Her faith did not go farther. “And she had a sister called Mary, who also, having sat down at Jesus’ feet was listening to his word.”
Mary is not characterized by such a reception of the Lord, by loving attentions and hospitality, though founded, no doubt, upon a growing out of faith. “Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to his word.” Some might suppose this to be a far less proof of love; but to Jesus it was incomparably the more acceptable of the two. Martha did honor to Jesus as a believing, righteous Jew might; she owned herself subject, Himself as King, and was as happy as her faith would admit of in thus receiving the Lord to her house in the day of His humiliation; but her sister sat at His feet and heard His Word. In her case it was not so much what she, did for the Lord; but she had such a sense of His greatness and love that her one point was to sit at His feet (an attitude of far deeper humiliation than Martha ever took) with the consciousness of the Divine fullness there was in Him for her. She heard His Word; but Martha “was distracted with much serving.” How many there are who are fond of serving the Lord, but are much more full of their own doings for Him than of what He is to them as well as in Himself! This deceives many. They measure faith by their round of bustle and activity. But in truth this always has a great deal of self in it. When true humility animates, there may be much done, but there is little noise. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His Word.278
“But Martha was distracted with much serving, and, coming up, she said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister has left me, to serve alone? speak to her therefore that she may help me.” Thus not only was there a large spice of self-importance in Martha, but she felt herself constantly slighted and incommoded by others. The spirit of egoism measures by itself, and cannot appreciate a love which is deeper than its own, and which issues in ways and forms which have no beauty in its eyes. Therefore Mary, instead of being an object of complacency to Martha, troubled her: Why did Mary not help her? Martha’s thoughts circled round herself. Had she been thinking of Jesus, she would not have dictated to Him any more than have complained of Mary. “Lord dost thou not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? speak to her therefore that she may help me.” What want of love and lowliness! She does not even leave it to the Lord to direct. Self is always captious as well as important, and as swift to impute to others as to arrogate to itself what is unbecoming. “Speak to her therefore that she may help me.” She forgets that she was but the servant of the Lord.
Who was she to wish to control Him? Martha was full of zeal, but of her own ways (not to say her own will) in serving Christ.
Jesus, however, answers with the dignity that was proper to Him, and the love that always sees true to its mark (for there is nothing that gives such a single eye as genuine affection), but which at the same time vindicates the true-hearted before those who misunderstand them. He loved them both, indeed, and says in reply, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things.” He deals first of all with herself. She ought not to have been thus anxious and careworn. Martha did not know what Paul knew so well: “This one thing I do.” There was never a man with such multitudinous occupations as the apostle; there was never another with such a heart for the Church. And yet he could happily employ his hands in making tents, because he would not be burdensome, though he had a right to be so as an apostle of Christ. What was it that carried him through all his unexampled toil and suffering, undistracted and happy? The reason was that one person, the only worthy Object, filled and governed his heart. This made him thoroughly happy in the midst of the deepest afflictions. This “one thing” is precisely what is needful for the child of God, and the very thing that Martha practically had not.279 It was not that she did not believe in the Lord; but she had her own thoughts too. Nature was strong. Jewish feeling and tradition held their ground; all these things wrought actively in her mind; and to such a person receiving the Lord Jesus was not only a question of doing Him honor, but of receiving honor herself too. In such cases self always, more or less, mingles even with the desire to show present respect to Jesus.
“But there is need of one; and Mary hath chosen the good part such as shall not be taken from her.” There is nothing like it. That good part is prizing Christ and His Word, not thinking what Mary could do for the Lord, but what the, Lord could do for Mary. To receive all for her soul from the Lord, instead of receiving Him into her house, was before Mary’s soul. This was the one thing needful — it was Christ Himself, He is all, and Mary Celt this, That “good part, such as shall not be taken from her” — it is eternal. Martha’s honors passed away; they were shortly about to end, for soon Jesus would not be known after the flesh, but must be known, if at all, in a higher glory than that of the Messiah. Soon, therefore, the possibility of receiving Him with a hospitable heart could not be Martha’s portion; for at His cross it would necessarily be cut short and disappear. But Mary’s position of lowly faith in hearing His Word could be always. Even in heaven the essence of it will not be lost. Communion with Jesus, delight in Jesus, humility of heart before Jesus, will always be true; it is the part of real devotedness and of the deepest love. Great as faith and hope may be (and their value cannot be over-estimated on earth), still, after all, love is that which abides forever; and love now is in proportion to the power of faith and hope. All these things were incomparably richer and stronger in Mary’s heart than in Martha’s, and this because Christ filled her heart — this one thing that is needful.
But blessed as receiving Jesus by faith may be, and sitting at His feet in the delight of love to hear from Him more and more, prayer must not he forgotten. It has an incalculable value for us here below. It is in this world that we pray. Worship is the outgoing of the heart in heaven. Not that worship for us now is not true, for it is the greatest privilege into which the Christian is brought while on earth. A Christian thus anticipates the mind and employment of heaven. He will still: be a worshipper when glorified; but he is a worshipper here, for the hour “now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”
Nevertheless, before the soul can worship in anything that could be said to be the power of the Spirit, prayer is the early and habitual resource day by day; and after Christian worship is entered into, real prayer abides and always must be for our wants and desires here below.
The disciples felt their need of prayer. They were stirred up to it by the fact that John taught his disciples to pray. They were born of God; but for all that, they lacked power for prayer, their souls were feeble in it. “And it came to pass, as he was in a certain place praying.” No one was so prayerful, so dependent on His God and Father, as Jesus; nor does any Evangelist present this so much as Luke, nor, consequently under so many different circumstances. “When he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray,280 even as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, When ye pray, say, Father, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us our needed bread for each day; and forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation.
I fully believe that this is the same prayer substantially that we have in Matthew, at the very same time and place. Luke does not adhere to the mere historic sequence of events any more then Matthew. But there is this difference in the way in which Luke and Matthew relate facts or instructions of the Lord: Matthew puts what our Lord says in a certain dispositional order, leaving out the occasions that drew them forth Luke puts His instructions in their moral order with the facts they illustrate.) Thus Luke introduces prayer at this point, after hearing the of Jesus;, because the Divine Word is what brings the knowledge of Jesus into the soul, as prayer is the outgoing of the heart to Him Who has given and shown us mercy and revealed it to us in His Word. A man must believe before he prays. “How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?” None can believe without the Word of God; but when one has received the Word of God, if it be only to plow up the conscience and attract the heart, one prays.
Thus, the disciples at this time feel their need of prayer, and the Lord teaches them how to pray. The Lord did not give them prayers suitable to the new position and circumstances they would be brought into after redemption. If He had descanted on prayer about the Church, the body of Christ, or the working of the Spirit by the members of that body, it would have been utterly unintelligible to them. The prayers that we have of Paul afterward could not have suited the condition of the disciples then, because they were not yet in any such standing. The conduct that would suit a married woman with her husband, etc., would be unbecoming in one who was still unmarried. For a woman who is only affianced to be praying about the children she is going to have when she may never have any, or about the household when the wedding day may never come, would be most evidently out of season. The Lord Jesus perfectly suited what He said to the condition and circumstances of those whom He addressed. The disciples had not received, though quickened of the Holy Ghost, the indwelling Spirit in the way they were going to have Him; consequently they could not pray as on that ground. It is a blunder to suppose that the gift of the Holy Ghost is conversion. When the Lord Jesus went to heaven, He sent down the Holy Ghost. The saints of the Old Testament were converted, but they had not the Holy Ghost as all have who rest on redemption since Pentecost. The disciples wanted to know how to pray, and the Lord gave them a prayer suited to their then circumstances. Only the Spirit of God has given a difference between the form in Matthew and in Luke. One is as Divinely inspired as the other; nothing can be more perfect than both are. The Gospels are absolutely perfect, each for its own object, and we need them all. The difference of their design affects the prayer, as it does everything else, Our Lord then directs the disciples to their Father. This is the first and very significant word of the prayer. When believers in addressing God now use the titles of Jehovah or Almighty God, do they not forget that they are Christians When God was intelligently addressed as Almighty, it was in the days of Abraham and the patriarchs. They were the days of promise. Afterward, when the nation of Israel was called out and put under law, it was as Jehovah-God that He was known. Now it is as Father that the Christian knows Him. Luke says simply, “Father” (not “Our Father which art in heaven,” as Matthew has it).281
The first petition is, “Hallowed be thy name.” The desire is that in every case the heart might make God its object; as we hear in James, “the wisdom that cometh down from above is first pure, then peaceable.” It first judges by God, and seeks the glory of God. “Hallowed be thy name.” Such is, and ought to be, the prime desire of the renewed mind, that the Father’s name should be sanctified in everything. All else must yield to this. “Hallowed be thy name.”
The next petition is that His kingdom should come. It is not the kingdom of the Son of man, the kingdom of Christ, that is spoken of here, but the Father’s kingdom. It is not “my kingdom come,” but “thy kingdom come.” The Father’s kingdom is distinguished from the Son of man’s kingdom. It is the sphere in which the heavenly saints will shine as the sun. The Son of man’s kingdom is the sphere in which all people, nations, and languages shall serve Him, and out of which the angels of His power shall cast all things that offend. Heaven and earth will both be put under the Lord Jesus when He comes, and both will constitute the kingdom of God. But the Father’s kingdom is the upper department, and the Son of man’s kingdom is the lower one. (Compare John 3:3, 123Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)
12If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? (John 3:12).) The Lord teaches them to pray for the Father’s kingdom. This is blessed and perfect. The Son would teach the children of the Father to wait with reverence and delight for the Father’s glory. This was the animating spring of every thought and feeling of His own heart. But the Father’s kingdom is not all the scene of glory.
Hence He adds elsewhere, “Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.” Though left out of Luke by excellent authority, it is undoubtedly read in the Gospel of Matthew, because the future kingdom will bring in the earth as well as heaven. This confirms the distinction between the Father’s kingdom and the Son’s. Not merely shall heaven be blessed, but the earth. All is to be made subject in fact, as all is put under His feet in title. The will of God is that all should bow to the Son, and that the crucified One should be exalted. The Son loved to exalt and did exalt the Father at all cost; the Father will accomplish His purpose “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”282
Then comes a petition expressive of dependence on God for our ordinary need. “Give us our needed bread for each day.” It takes up the pure and simple need of the body. The word “daily” is a very imperfect expression in English of the original term. Ἐπιούσιος really means our “sufficient” bread (seemingly a word expressly formed for this idea in contrast with superfluity). One cannot without slighting the wisdom of the Lord ask for more than sufficiency. One ought not to look for more, even from the Lord of heaven and earth. He bids me ask for bread enough for each day’s wants.283 Yet it is thoroughly the spirit of the One Who, after He had fed five thousand men with the five loaves and the two fishes, bade the disciples gather up the fragments which remained, that nothing might be lost. And then and thus twelve baskets were in fact filled. How easy it might have seemed for Him by Whom all was supplied to have exerted His power afresh! He would not have an atom to be thrown away because He had unlimited power. What a lesson for us!
Next comes the need of the soul. “Forgive us our sins.” It is not merely our “debts” (as in Matt. 6): a Jew would understand this; but Luke, writing particularly for Gentiles, tells the disciples to say, “Forgive us our sins.” This does not refer to a sinner’s forgiveness, when he first comes to the knowledge of the Lord, but to the disciple under the daily government of his Father. How misleading, then, it is to make an unconverted person take the ground of asking forgiveness like a child of God! Under the Gospel the way for the unconverted to receive the remission of sins is by faith in the blood of Jesus, by receiving the Gospel itself. 284 The common use of it is to confound all truth by mixing up all, the world and children of God, as if they were alike disciples drawing near and asking forgiveness for their daily sins. The forgiveness of a child is all that is spoken of here, the removal what hinders communion; not that which the Gospel publishes to the most guilty that believe in the Saviour and Lord, but the daily pardon which the believer needs. It is, therefore, the habitual need of the soul, just as the daily bread was that of the body. “For we also forgive every one indebted to us.” This is remarkable, because it evidently supposes one who has a forgiving spirit already, and no one really has this except he who is forgiven by the grace of God. And God does hold His children to this. How can a man who does not forgive another pretend to enjoy the forgiveness of his own sins before God? There is a righteous government on our Father’s part, and the particular, sin which grieves the Lord is not forgiven till we confess it to Him. “If ye do not forgive,” says our Lord in Mark 11:2626But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. (Mark 11:26), “neither will your Father who is in the heavens forgive your offences.” It is the cherishing a spirit entirely antagonistic to the Spirit of the Lord. If there were a child in a family going on in a course of self-will, there would be a bar for the time to mutual good feeling. So with God our Father; if there were a persistently bad spirit towards another, so long the Father does not forgive as a question of communion and of daily intercourse with Himself. It ruins the intelligence of Scripture to make it all a question of eternity. In the Epistles of the New Testament the remedy or duty in such circumstances takes the form, not so much of asking forgiveness as of confession, which goes far deeper. To ask for forgiveness is easy enough, and quickly done (as you may learn from your child); to confess one’s fault in all its gravity is a very humiliating process, and if not with a view to forgiveness and the restoration of communion, it is a mockery of God. To confess, to judge oneself, is therefore far beyond asking forgiveness.
The last clause here should be, “and lead us not into temptation.” The heart, knowing its own weakness, does spread its desire before the Lord; it feels the need of being kept, not of being put to the proof. “Deliver us from evil” is left out in the most ancient copies. The only right and true way of understanding the mind of God, and the best homage to Scripture, is always and only to cleave to that which is undoubtedly of Himself. This is not to take away anything from Scripture; it is to lay aside what is not Scripture. We have these words quite rightly in Matthew besides: we gain by their omission here instead of losing. The question arises, Why should it be given in Matthew and omitted here? “Deliver us from evil” refers, I believe, to the evil one and the exhibition of his power, which a Jew ought always to have before him, that tremendous hour which will be allowed as a final retribution on the nation, before they are delivered for the reign of Christ. As Luke had the Gentiles in view, this was naturally and wisely left out. Deliverance from this scourge would have been less felt by them, and hardly intelligible, as the earthly millennial portion disappears for a similar reason. What is general and moral abides here.285
The Lord here enforces prayer, and this on considerations drawn (as often in Luke) from the human heart, as showing still more powerfully what God feels in answer to the earnestness of men.
“He said to them, Who among you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight and say unto him, Friend, let me have three loaves; since a friend of mine on a journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? and he within answering should say, Do not disturb me; the door is already shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise up to give [it] thee, I say unto you, although he will not rise up and give [them] to him because he is his friend, because of his shamelessness, at any rate, he will rise up and give him as many as he wanteth.” The time may seem ever so inopportune, but although a man may not for friendship’s sake listen to him who requests the loan of bread, he would rather rise and give than expose himself to trouble. Every one knows that this is apt to be the way of a man with the neighbor who is bold enough to press. He might be ever so much annoyed at the importunate suitor, but still to avoid the trouble of a continued appeal at his door, he yields. At least, such is an ordinary case: “Because of his shamelessness he will rise and give him as many as he wanteth.”286
If such is the way of selfish, ease-loving man, how much more will the God of all grace hearken to those who cry to Him! He is not weary He never slumbers nor sleeps; He is full of goodness and compassionate care. “I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”287 — an evident climax; tending to urgency of supplication before God: not as if God needed it, but man does; and God values the earnestness of man’s heart, although His own is open to the cry of want or distress from the very first. But we know that there are hindrances from other causes, and that the Lord has Himself told us of a kind (speaking of evil spirits) that goes not forth but by prayer and fasting. There we have the highest degree of the soul’s abstraction from all else, giving itself up to God’s power in order to defeat the devil. “For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it will be opened.” There is always in Luke, not only an appeal to the feelings of the heart, and man’s own concession of what even he would do in order to illustrate the ways of God, infinitely more admirable and excellent, but there is also a comprehensiveness which goes far beyond the narrow bounds of Israel. “Every one that asketh receiveth.” Thus we have here the call to importunity of prayer, and the certainty of God’s answer.287a
But this is again enforced on the ground of the relationship of a child with a father. “Of whom of you that is a father shall a son ask bread, and [the father] shall give 288 him a stone? or also a fish, and instead of a fish shall give him a serpent? or if also he shall ask an egg, shall give him a scorpion?” How contrary to the feelings of a parent, to mock when he affects to give! to give what is injurious instead of what is good! Impossible that a father, speaking now ordinarily of any father, would be guilty of such ways. “If, therefore, ye, being 289 evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will the Father who [is] of heaven 290 give [the] Holy Spirit 291 to them that ask him.” In the Gospel of Matthew it is “give good things to them that ask him.”291a
But Luke goes farther, and shows us, not, it is true, the person of the Comforter, as in the Gospel of John, but certainly the Holy Spirit as characterizing the gift of the Father’s love to those who ask Him. For we must remember that the disciples had not yet the Holy Spirit. They were born of the Spirit, but this is a very different thing from enjoying the gift of the Spirit. To have the Holy Ghost given is over and above conversion or new birth; it is not life, but power; a privilege superadded to the possession of the new nature, and the chief or only means of enjoying God according to all the instincts of that nature, and consequently of entering into His wisdom in the Word of God. This is the richest distinctive gift of Christianity on earth, as Christ on high, the Head to Whom We are united as His body, is the main heavenly characteristic. Neither of these privileges was true as yet; no one had ever enjoyed them since the beginning of the world. The disciples were told then and encouraged to ask their heavenly Father, Who would surely give the Holy Spirit to those who asked Him. The disciples accordingly continued Acts 1:1414These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. (Acts 1:14) as we know from Acts 1:1414These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. (Acts 1:14); so that even after the Lord died and rose they had not received the Holy Spirit according to this word; they were still expecting. Yet they had received the Spirit as life more abundantly, as the power of His resurrection life; but the gift of the Spirit was something more. It was the indwelling of the Spirit of God, Who would also act in various gifts in the members, and, above all, in baptizing them into one body. All this was accomplished, but not before Pentecost. They were therefore to ask their heavenly Father, and so they did; and the Holy Spirit of promise was given according to the Saviour’s word.
There may be cases still, I cannot but think, where it would be right thus to ask our Father. This would be souls who are, like the disciples, converted, but who have not yet submitted to the righteousness of God — who do not yet consciously rest on redemption. In such a state it would be hazardous to say they had received the Holy Ghost while they do not enjoy peace with God. When there is a simple rest by faith on the great work of the Lord Jesus, and not merely faith in His person, then the Holy Ghost is given. Where the blood was put the oil followed, according to the types of Leviticus.
There is great care in this Gospel to show the connection of Satan with men, just as we have seen the privilege of the believer in the possession of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God is the power of communion for the new man, for those who are born of God. So Satan is pleased to fill with the power of the demon the old nature of man, in certain cases where God permits him; and the Lord shows the link between the demon and the sickness, weakness, or other malady of body or mind; as we find here in the case of the dumb man: “And he was casting out a demon, and it was dumb; and it came to pass, the demon having gone out, the dumb [man] spoke. And the crowds wondered.” It is evident from this that what produced the lack of speech was not physical infirmity, but the demon that dwelt in the man. Directly the demon left he that had been dumb spoke. What the Lord was occupied with here below was in giving a specimen of that which will characterize the world to come. The powers that He exercised, as others afterward in virtue of His name, were “the powers of the world [or age] to come,” as they are called in Heb. 6:55And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, (Hebrews 6:5). The millennial age will thus afford a full display of the defeat of Satan, to the glory of God, and this in and by man. The Lord’s curing of bodily diseases, and casting out of demons, was a partial exhibition of what will be public and universal in that day.
“The crowds wondered” on this occasion; but the spirit of unbelief is stronger than the power of evidences. Hence, “some from among them said, By Beelzebub,293 the prince of the demons, casts he out demons.” We must distinguish between the instruments of Satan’s power and the devil himself. The word “devils” confounds the two things. It is to say “demons.” “By Beelzebub, the prince of the demons, casts he out demons.” Others did not go quite so far as this; but “tempting [him], sought from him a sign out of heaven.”
Satan does not lead all in the same way, but he suits his action to the flesh of each. Some men are violent in their unbelief, while others are more religious. Some “tempting [him], sought from him a sign out of heaven.” They were not content with what God had given, though there could be no external proof more convincing than the expulsion of Satan’s power. Hence this was strongly marked at the starting-point of the Lord’s ministry in this Gospel as well as Mark’s. So it was throughout. The Lord, answering their unbelieving thoughts, says, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house set against a house falleth.” It would be suicidal for Satan to undermine his own influence. “If also Satan is divided against himself, how shall his kingdom subsist? ye say that I cast out demons by Beelzebub.”
But there is more to be noticed. God had before this occasionally given power to Jews to cast out demons. Faith is always honored of God; and on the darkest day the Lord did not fail to keep up as it were the holy fire, that His light should not absolutely go out on the earth. “But if I by Beelzebub cast out demons, your sons — by whom do they cast [them] out? For this reason they shall be your judges.” No unbelief on their part ever irritated the Lord. Far from this, He could calmly acknowledge what had been of God among them, though this in no way hindered them from denying God Himself present among men.294 “But if by the finger of God295 I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God is come upon you.”
This is an expression of no small importance, “the kingdom of God is come upon you.” In another sense it might be said that the kingdom of God was nigh. Here it is said to be come, because Christ was there. Christ brought, as it were, the kingdom of God in His own person. All others require the kingdom of God to come for them to be in the kingdom; but Christ, being a Divine Person, brought that kingdom in Himself, displaying it by His own power, manifested by the overthrow of Satan, by casting out demons. And yet man was blind, more guiltily so than the poor soul before us was, who could not through his dumbness speak the praises of God. For here, when God had proved His power, they were as blind as ever, they could not see God in it, or rather in Jesus.
When the kingdom of heaven is spoken of, it is never said to be come. It could not be said according to Scripture phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is come unto you.” Thus “the kingdom of heaven” and “the kingdom of God” are not quite identical. They agree so far that what in one Gospel is called the kingdom of heaven is called in another Gospel the kingdom of God. Matthew alone speaks of “the kingdom of heaven,” as Mark, Luke, and John do of “the kingdom of God.” But what is in Matthew called “kingdom of heaven,” is called in the other Gospels “kingdom of God,” of which last Matthew himself speaks in a few passages. The difference is this: that the kingdom of heaven always supposes a change of dispensation consequent on the Saviour’s having taken His place above. He may by and by bring His power below, but He must have come from heaven to bring in the kingdom of heaven. Hence in the future, to establish it in power and glory, it is the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven Who receives that kingdom, and makes it good over all the earth.
The kingdom of heaven never means heaven itself; but rather the rule of the heavens over the earth. When the actual departure on high of the Lord Jesus is spoken of, it is always said to be into heaven, and not into the kingdom of heaven. When the Lord, then, was here below, and manifested His power over Satan, it was the kingdom of God: it could be so called because the King — the power of God — was there. So here in this place He, by the power of God casting out demons, proved that the kingdom of God was come. What better proof could be asked? Man was totally insufficient for such a work; others might have done so in special answer to prayer. God is always superior to the devil, and it was important that He should prow this from time to time in expelling demons by the son of Israel who possessed the place of relationship to God that no other people had. But in the Lord’s case it was not occasional, exceptional, or partial, but uniform and universal: even where the disciples themselves, using His name, failed to cast them out, He always did it with a word. The kingdom of God, therefore, was come as a witness of His power, not yet as a state and sphere of manifestation, Both morally and in power, the kingdom of God was come in Him Who bound the strong man and stripped him of his goods.
And this leads me to another remark. The apostle Paul frequently speaks of the kingdom of God, not as a dispensation but as a moral display. He says that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” He says, too, that “the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.” You could not say “the kingdom of heaven” in these cases. Thus we see the reason why Luke particularly can speak of the kingdom of God, for he is the Evangelist who dwells on the moral side more than any other. Hence, too, there is a stronger link between his language and that of St. Paul than between any other two writers of the New Testament.296
Then the Lord introduces a remarkable figure: “When the strong [man] armed keepeth his own house [court], his goods are in peace; but when the stronger than he coming upon [him], overcometh him, he taketh away his panoply297 in which he trusted; and he will divide the spoil [he has taken] from him.” This was going on then. If Satan was the strong man in the figure, Jesus was now stripping him of his goods and dividing his spoils. The whole ministry of Jesus was the evidence of a power superior to Satan in the world. It is true that this did not finally deliver, because it did not touch the judgment of God. It was present and not eternal deliverance. It was the overthrow of Satan, not the satisfaction of God. Sin could not yet have been abolished, and judgment must still have remained. No grace, nor power, nor ministry can take away sin, nothing but the sacrifice of Himself.298 That infinitely deeper question was behind, and was settled, not in the life of Jesus, but in His atoning death on the cross. Here He merely speaks of the power then present by a living Christ, which did deliver men from the oppression of Satan, as far as this life was concerned in the world; but not for eternity, not before God. This side of the truth, the victorious power of Christ over Satan in this life, for the earth, has been greatly forgotten in Christendom; and the more so because they bring in the living power of Christ to supplement His death for righteousness and atonement. They have made both life, and death necessary for settling the question of a guilty soul for eternity. Consequently they have in practice seen little more than this, forgetting the power of Satan on the one hand, and the power of the Spirit on the other, except in a superstitious way, which only brings the truth into disrepute. These antagonistic realities have been lost sight of; and the grand witness is overlooked that the Lord was giving of a future deliverance of man from Satan’s power, when His kingdom will be, not merely in the Spirit’s power, but in manifestation. All this has well-nigh dropped out of Christendom. The Jews were feeble about eternal deliverance, but held fast the hope of the kingdom, of blessing in the earth and world by the Messiah, when the power of the serpent would be evidently broken.
Then we find a most solemn principle in vs. 23. “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.” The presence of Christ brought this out, and more particularly when He was being rejected. When Christ was acceptable, there was no moral test; but when public opinion was universally against Him, and it was evident that to follow Christ was to be slighted by the great and wise, then it proved the strongest criterion. So the Lord now says, “He that is not with me is against me.” If I am not with Him I am against Him. The more He is rejected, the more I must throw in my lot with Him. And this is a, test, not only for one’s person, but also for one’s work, as it is added here, “He that gathereth not with me scattereth.” The first is more particularly true for the unconverted man, and the second for the converted who is worldly in his work.
A man might himself be really with Christ, but yet in his labors he might build or prop up what is of the world. Such a person, no matter what the apparent effects may be, may become the most popular of preachers, and produce widespread effects, philanthropic and religious; but “he that gathereth not with me scattereth,” says the Lord. There is no scattering so real in the sight of God as the gathering of Christians on false principles. It is worse than if they were not gathered at all. There is a deeper hindrance to the truth, because there is a spirit of party and denomination that is necessarily hostile to Christ. A false gathering-point substitutes another center for Christ, and consequently makes greater confusion. “He that gathereth not with me scattereth.”299
Then we find the picture of the unclean spirit — that is, the spirit of idolatry. It had once possessed the Jewish nation; but here it is applied in the case, not merely of a nation, but of an individual, It acquires a more moral shape than in the Gospel of Matthew, where it is dispensational. “When the unclean spirit hath gone out of the man, he goeth through dry places, seeking rest; and not finding any, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out.” A person might, through evidence and convictions of one sort or another, profess to follow Christ, and be outwardly with Him. But the mere absence of outward evil will never bring a soul to God. God Himself must be known, and Jesus Himself received, not merely the unclean spirit be gone out. A man may leave off evil of a gross kind, he may give up false religion, or, as in this case, idolatry; bat all this does not consecrate a man. It is the presence of God in possession of a soul — it is the having a new nature, and not merely the absence of this or that evil — that determines the matter. The unclean spirit ran return to the house unless it is already occupied by the power of God’s Spirit, which alone effectually mts Satan out. “And having come, he findeth it swept and adorned.” No doubt, as compared with heathenism, there is the absence of much that is abominable and offensive. Christian truth is owned; and the unclean spirit, therefore, finds the house, when he returns, swept and garnished. This will be true in Christendom, as it may be also in an individual. After a person has through the outward influence of Christ laid aside evil, the power of Satan gathers fresh fuel; and the man falls into worse evil than if he had never professed His name at all. It is not a simple return to what he was, not merely that the old evil re-asserts its energy; but there is a fresh and complete torrent of evil, a new and worse power of the enemy that takes possession of the soul; and “the last condition of that man becomes worse than the first.”300 An apostate is the most hopeless of all evil men. So it will be with the Jew and so with Christendom; it is the same thing with any man at any time in these circumstances. There is nothing for any one except cleaving to the name of the Lord. Nor is it only a question of glorifying the Lord, but of positive necessity for his own soul.301
The power that delivers a man’s body, in this respect breaking the thralldom of Satan, however true, is eclipsed by that which is still more precious. Nevertheless, men could not but feel the homage that was due to power, and this so beneficent. “And it came to pass as he spike these things, a certain woman, lifting up her voice, out of the crowd said to him, Blessed is the womb that has borne thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” This gave the Lord occasion to show what was far better. “But he said, Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep [it].” Without denying the value of Divine power in such a world as this, yet, said our Lord, “rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep [it].” The goodness of God sown in nature, for which (though not alone) the Jews were called to wait, would give place to a superior order of blessing. The very badness of the world’s state and of men upon it is the occasion for God to bring in what never passes away, and is destined to endure when the world is gone. There is nothing here below that introduces the eternal like the Word of God. Power, even were it as great as that which Jesus wielded over man or the enemy, is but for a time in its effects; but “he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” And “he that believeth hath everlasting life.” “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep [it].” The Word of God is the link between man on earth and God above; it is the seed of incorruptible life, “which liveth and abideth forever.”
Accordingly here again man is put to the proof. He had been already tested by power, and he who could impute that which cast out Satan to Satan himself was self-condemned. It would make Satan more foolish than the most foolish man, for it is a universal principle that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Can it be thought that Satan deliberately destroys his own kingdom and himself? Is he really suicidal? The Jews then showed to what they were fallen when they imputed to Satan the power that cast out demons., And now what became of the Jews who heard the Word of God and did not keep it? Nothing more terrible.
“But as the crowds thronged together, he began to say, This generation is a wicked generation: it seeketh a sign; and a sign shall not be given to it but the sign of Jonas.” Instead of keeping the Word of God, they were seeking outward tokens. They wanted something visible to their senses, an object tangible in their midst, not only present but earthly and suited to the world. “But there shall no sign be given it but the sign of Jonas the prophet.” The allusion is to one who prophesied in Israel, but who was sent to the Gentiles — to the Ninevites.303 “For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, thus shall also the Son of man be to this generation.” He too, the rejected Messiah, would take the place of Son of man, despised and rejected of men.
But more than this: “a queen of the south” and “men of Nineveh” are brought before us in another way to condemn the Jews of that day.
“A queen304 of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and shall condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, more than Solomon is here.” This showed her earnestness of purpose to hear the wisdom of Solomon. The wise and wealthy son of David was not the vessel of the Word of God in his ordinary speech as the Lord Jesus was: yet she came without a single miracle to attract her, without a sign to guide or confirm, and heard the wisdom of Solomon: “and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.”
Then, again, men of Nineveh themselves, that great city which had been given up to destruction at last — “men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonas;”305 They were willing to own their own evil, their sinfulness, their forgetful ignorance of God, and this at the preaching of Jonas — a prophet comparatively unfaithful, who hove to escape from the mission on which God sent him, “and, behold, more than Jonas is here.” But where were the men of this generation, and what? Did they repent?
No more did they repent than they showed what was seen in a queen of the south — earnestness of heart in listening to the wise man of her day. Thus there was a double testimony against them; Gentiles, high or low, at one time or another, rose up to condemn the men of Jerusalem.
Then the Lord brings out another truth, namely, that the fault lay not in the want of signs any more than in the display of power (for we have seen the contrary), but in the state of the heart. That is the only reason why man does not rejoice in or keep the Word of God; it is because his heart is not right with God. No person would prefer darkness to light or pleasure to the Word of God unless the heart were wrong. “No one having lighted a lamp setteth it secret,306 nor under the corn-measure, but on the lamp-stand, that they who enter in may see the light,” So it was with the ways of God. There was no defect in his presentation.
The Light was come and God set it in a due and commanding position that all who saw it might be profited, Never was there one who held forth the light of God as Jesus did. He never wavered, for He was the Holy One, the Undefiled, separate from sinners. There was no fault therefore to be found with the Medium; Jesus not only showed perfect light in what He said, but was the Light Himself. All His perfection on Him; yet how had men treated it? Alas! there are other conditions necessary. “The lamp of the body is thine eye: [therefore] when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is light; but when it is wicked, thy body also is dark.” Here we reach so far what man is. It is not here as in John, that Christ is the Light; there we see His personal glory.307
But Luke always brings in man’s state, or moral condition. “The lamp of the body is thine eye.” Light alone outside does not enable a man to see. If the eye, physically, is powerless, the light mikes no impression. As in John, the light may be over so true, but, according to Luke, the eye also enters the a account; and by nature it is evil and only so. It is not only Christ as Light that is wanted. Eyes to see must be given; its actual state must be considered. “[Therefore] when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is light.” It is a question here of moral purpose. If there be no object to divide the heart’s attention, if Christ fills the field of vision, the whole body is light. “But when it is wicked, thy body also is dark.” And is there not evil in looking to other objects from Christ, in turning away from the only One Who is worthy? “When it is evil thy body also is dark. See, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness.” What darkness is comparable to it? This is moral darkness, and fatal to the soul which can see nothing in Christ, or if it seem to see, is evidently indifferent to Christ, indifferent not to one’s own soul alone, but to the eternal truth of God. The eye is evil, the body, therefore, is dark indeed.
“See, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness.” Such is the end of a carelessness and unfaithfulness to truth. This was becoming the confirmed history of Israel. They had, as compared with the Gentiles, possessed Divine light; but “See that the light which is in thee be not darkness.” It was to the last degree becoming their fixed state. They were first indifferent to Christ; finally, they would reject Him to the uttermost — then it would be the darkness of death. “If, therefore, the whole body is light, not having any part dark, it shall be all light, as when the lamp lighteth thee with its brightness.” Thus when one has light for oneself, it becomes the means of light for others. In Divine things you cannot separate power for others from testimony to the glory of God.
What follows is of a very different character from that which we had before. It is not now the setting aside of Jewish expectations for the Word of God, which the Holy Spirit makes efficacious by judging self, and thus the eye is made single and the whole body full of light. There is no substitution here of God’s Word and spiritual blessing for the Messiah, and all the natural mercies and external glory that Israel looked for then and shall look for by and by. Now it is the moral judgment of Israel in their present state; and for this occasion was given, by a certain Pharisee asking the Lord to dine308 with him. He goes at once. He in no Way chooses what was pleasing to Himself. As He entered into the house of a tax-gatherer, and refused none of the company there, so also He declines not to seat Himself at table with a Pharisee. When He went into the tax-gatherer’s house, the wonder was how He could eat with sinners; the wonder with the Pharisees now is, “that he had not first washed before dinner.” Such was their religion.309 Yet the truth, on the face of things, is that washing is for those who are unclean: He Who was pure and holy did not need it. The Pharisee therefore condemns himself doubly. There is a vague consciousness that he needed cleansing. He shows also his blindness to the personal glory of the Lord Jesus, the only One Who needed nothing from without — the Holy One of Israel, the Holy One of God.
The Lord takes this accordingly as the ground of appeal.
He “said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish; but your inward [parts] are full of plunder and wickedness.” Their religion, all protest to the contrary notwithstanding,310 was essentially of the outside; and, far from being clean, they were full of plunder and wickedness, plundering others and wicked themselves. Although they had the highest reputation among the people, the Lord pronounces them fools; and what His Word censures now His judgment will act On by and by. The judgment of God is always according to the Word of God. What is condemned by the Word of God now will certainly be condemned by the Lord Jesus when He takes the judicial throne. But it was the same God Who made both the outside and the inside. “Fools, hath not he who hath made the outside made the inside also?” They had forgotten Him; they were anxious only for what was seen of men. The Lord looks upon the heart. They did not think of this. Unbelief is always blind, and fixes, if there be a difference, on things the least important. The reason is manifest: it seeks the praise of men and not that of God. The Lord Jesus, however, bids them “rather give alms of what ye have311 and, behold, all things are clean unto you.” He knew well that a Pharisee would do nothing less than this — that intense selfishness characterized the whole party. They were faithless and covetous. Him Whom God gave they despised; what they had they kept for themselves. All things therefore were unclean to them.
But there is much more than this. The Lord pronounces successive woes upon them for their zeal about trifles, their love of religious distinction, and their hypocrisy.312? “Woe unto you, Pharisees! for [beginning with that which was seemingly the least evil] ye tithe the mint and the rue and every herb, and pass by the judgment and the love of God: these ye ought to have done, and not have left those aside.” It was really the same root of self, fallen human nature under a religious veil. Why did they thus seek to be distinguished from others? Others gave tithes honestly due to God; the Pharisees laid hold of the most minute points which did not cost much and gave themselves credit in the eyes of men not wiser than themselves, but they slighted judgment and the love of God. Righteousness is a due sense of our relationship to God and man; of it they had no adequate measure whatever before them. The love of God was the last thing that came before or from their hearts.313 “These ye ought to have done, and not have left those aside.” Let them value their infinitesimals if they would, but let them not neglect the greatest duties.
But it was not merely this God-dishonoring pettiness. “Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the first seat in the synagogues, and salutations in the market-places.” Now we come, not so much to personal conduct and pretension to the strictest conscientiousness, but to their love of public reputation for sanctity and of honor in the religious world.
Another ground detected was lower still. “Woe unto you, [scribes, and Pharisees, hypocrites] for ye are as the sepulchers which appear not, and the men walking over them do not know fit].” Now they are put with the scribes — people learned in the law, who had the character of being the most punctilious in their conduct: both are alike treated as hypocrites — as sepulchers which appear not. Unremoved death, all uncleanness and corruption, was under these fair-seeming religionists.
One of the lawyers was offended “and said to him, Teacher, in saying these things thou insultest us also.” Then the Lord answers them: “Woe unto you also, doctors of the law! for ye lay upon men burdens heavy to bear, and yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.” They were notorious for their contempt of the very people from whom they derived their importance.314 It is an easy thing to lay burdens upon others; it is hard to bear them. Christianity is the exact opposite of this. Christ comes down first of all and takes the sorest of all burdens, the judgment of our sin and guilt, our condemnation from God; then He leaves us under the Gospel, without that burden. It is true that, till He comes again, we are groaning in the body, waiting not uncertainly but in confidence for Christ to change us even into the likeness of His glorious body. Hence it is that the practical exercise of Christianity is in liberty and joy. No doubt grace brings with it the highest obligations, but they are those of men who are free and who use their liberty for the One whom they love. It was not so with these doctors of the law. They laid burdens upon men that were grievous to be borne, but they themselves did not touch the burdens with one of their fingers. It is only grace that enables one to manifest what the law requires. The doctors of the law were precisely those who showed the least conscience. They thundered the law at others; they did not subject themselves to any of its precepts, except where it suited them. It is grace which purifies the conscience by faith and strengthens it in the will of God.
But if they did not touch any of the burdens that they laid on others, they built the sepulchers of the prophets. This sounded well and holy. What could be more laudable than that they should honor the ancient sufferers and prophets by building their sepulchers? It was really the spirit of the world. First of all they proved that they were the successors of those who killed them, not the successors of the martyrs but of their murderers. Although it seemed the opposite of what their fathers had done, it was the same love of the world which slew the martyrs in that day; and now led men to build their sepulchers in order to make religious capital out of this pious honor, They would fain have the halo that surrounded those men of God thereby to shine upon themselves. It was the love of the world that made the fathers slay them; and the love of the world it was that led their sons to build these sepulchers over them. There was of course nothing of Christ in those who persecuted the martyrs. Was there a whit more in these men bet on empty self-glorification under cover of the righteous victims of old? Therefore says the Lord, “Ye bear witness then and consent to the works of your fathers: for they killed them, and ye build [their sepulchers].” And to prove that they were the lineal successors of the murderers of the old martyrs, the Lord adds, “For this reason also the wisdom of God hath said, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of these they shall kill and drive out by persecution.”315 It is expressly put as the wisdom of God, because it is not what would appear to man. The builders of the sepulchers of the sufferers might seem to be the farthest removed from the persecuting violence of the fathers; but not so. The contrary would soon appear. God would test them soon by sending prophets and apostles, some of whom they would slay, and some they would persecute, getting rid of them all in one way or another. “That the blood of all the prophets, which hath been poured out from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, who perished between the altar and the temple; yea, I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation.” This is a searching and solemn principle. Man fails from the first, and God pronounces on it. But it is always the last who is the most guilty, because the cases of former slaying of the prophets ought to have aroused their consciences. Their building of sepulchers for the saints whom their fathers slew proved that they knew how wrong it was. But the heart was unchanged; and hence a similar testimony produced no less results, but more evil. God’s testimony at the present day arouses quite as much hatred as His warnings of old. Hence, little as the Jews thought it (for they had been long without prophets), now that the truth was sent out in power, the same murderous spirit would be manifested, and God would hold the people guilty of all the blood that had been shed from the foundation of the world. Instead of using the example of their fathers to deter them, they followed their guilty footsteps. They were more guilty, because they despised so solemn a warning.
So it will be in the latter day. There will be a violent outbreak against the witnesses of Jesus, whose blood will be shed like water — a persecution all the more guilty because men will have known it beforehand; they will have owned the guilt of those who did it, and yet they will fall into the same rut themselves. Alas! unbelief is most of all blind to self.
The Lord pronounces final one more woe. “Woe unto you, the doctors of the law, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge is; yourselves have not entered in and those who were entering in ye have hindered.” So they were doing then; as others at this present time. Wisdom was there, truth was there, Christ was there: all that the doctors of the law did was to hinder people from profiting by it, in order to maintain their own importance.
“And as he said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him vehemently, and to make him speak317 of many things.” They wanted Him to commit Himself — that the Lord might utter something for which they could drag Him to their tribunal, “watching him [and seeking] to catch something out of his mouth [that they might accuse him].” Their hearts were filled, not only, with plunder, but with wickedness that would take the shape of violence against the truth and those who bore it, just like their fathers. The first Adam is never changed for the better: he is only evil continually: the more good is shown him, the more evil he proves himself to be.
Endnotes
277 Chapter 10, verses 38-42. — This section seems to be connected with a Visit to Jerusalem at the Feast of Dedication (in winter: John 9:1-10:421And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. 2And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? 3Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. 4I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. 6When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, 7And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. 8The neighbors therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? 9Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he. 10Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened? 11He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight. 12Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not. 13They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind. 14And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes. 15Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see. 16Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them. 17They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet. 18But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight. 19And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see? 20His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind: 21But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself. 22These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him. 24Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner. 25He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. 26Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes? 27He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples? 28Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples. 29We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. 30The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. 31Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. 32Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. 33If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. 34They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out. 35Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? 36He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? 37And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. 38And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. 39And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. 40And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? 41Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. 1Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. 2But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. 4And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. 5And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers. 6This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them. 7Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. 8All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. 9I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. 10The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. 11I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. 12But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. 13The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. 15As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. 17Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. 18No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. 19There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. 20And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? 21Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind? 22And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. 23And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. 24Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. 25Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. 26But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. 27My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 29My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. 30I and my Father are one. 31Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32Jesus answered them, Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? 33The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. 34Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; 36Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? 37If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. 38But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. 39Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand, 40And went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized; and there he abode. 41And many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true. 42And many believed on him there. (John 9:1‑10:42)). Cf. notes 244, 251. The visit to this “certain village,” understood as Bethany, cannot have belonged to the Passion period, but must be placed very early in the same year.
There are two sermons of Augustine on verse 38 (op. cit.); one of Richard Baxter on verse 41 (“Works,” x. 407); and G. Whitefield preached on verse 42 (“Works,” v. 456).
278 Verse 39. — Cf. 1 Cor. 7:3131And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away. (1 Corinthians 7:31) ff. Carr suggests that our Lord’s words were in the Apostle’s mind. See also note on John 14:2323Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:23). Augustine says: “A man resting on faith, hope, and love needs not the Scriptures, except for the purpose of instructing others” (“On Christian Doctrine,” 1:37: cf. his Epistles, 19:82). Is it, however, to be supposed that he acted upon this himself?
279 Verse 42. —Basil and Theophylact offer the feeble explanation: one dish only.
280 Chapter 11, Verse 1. — Here seems to begin the second narrative (see note 244) of the final journey to Jerusalem, extending as far as 14:21.
“To pray.” Luke has recorded in this place the dictation by our Lord of the formula which goes by His name, in order to bind together the two great supports of spiritual life, Christ’s Word (10:39) and Prayer: see the Expositor’s “Lectures on Matthew,” p. 85f,
The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Divines has as Question 98, “What is Prayer?” Sabatier answers by “Religion in act” (“Philosophy of Religion,” p. 27).
PRAYER has ever been regarded as an appropriate instrument of communion with the Unseen; as such it is the counterpart of His voice to us. The Scriptures and Prayer together fortify believers against mere Mysticism (147A) on the one hand, and against pure Rationalism on the other (cf. Ritschl, “Theology and Metaphysics,” p. 476). For the Spirit as the power of such communion, see Rom. 8:2626Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (Romans 8:26), and Exposition of verse 14f.
Pantheism (exemplified by Buddhism) makes no provision for Prayer, which is alien to such systems. Some philosophers and scientists criticize the underlying conception of Prayer as irrational: to their objections Martineau’s writings offer effective replies. “Does Prayer influence GOD?” a common inquiry, to which the answer of S. D. Gordon is “It does not influence His purpose; it does influence His action. He does nothing without our consent. When we learn His purposes and make them our prayer, we are giving Him the opportunity to act. Nature’s laws are merely God’s habit of action in handling secondary forces. They involve no purpose of God. His purposes are regarding moral issues. Emergencies change all habits of action. The world is in a great emergency through sin” (“Quiet Talks on Prayer,” p. 54ff.).
Chrysostom and Augustine emphasized the Fatherhood of God as characteristic of the Christians dispensation: no Old Testament saint used the, epithet save as member of a community. Maurice and other moderns have developed the idea.
“Hallowed be Thy Name”: cf. Lev. 24:1616And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death. (Leviticus 24:16), by misuse of which the Jews come to treat Yahveh (Jehovah) as taboo, and to employ it in the Temple services only, but in those of the synagogues. Adonay (Lord) alone: see references in Schürer, div. ii., vols. 1, 2. In common life they spoke of “the Name” (Aramaic: Shona) (adman, p. 149f.). In the Tosefta “Sanhedrin” (12:25) we have, “He that pronounces the Tetragrammaton has no part in the future world.” Cf. Joseph. “Antiqq.,” ii. 276.
Stock (p. 28) compares the substitution by journalists of “the Founder of Christianity” for “JESUS,” etc.
282 “Thy KINGDOM come.” To this day the words find place in the Kaddish of the Jewish Prayer Book. Cf. in particular Luke 9:27, 14:15, 19:11, 21:31, 22:16, 18, and 23:51, in each of which passages the “kingdom” is regarded emphatically as future. But these words evidently “keep the double aspect in mind” (Warman, “New Testament Theology,” p. 23).
In 22:29f. the Lord speaks of His own Kingdom in the same future aspect of manifestation: see notes on that chapter. For prayer that it may come, see Rev. 22:2020He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. (Revelation 22:20), almost the last words of the Bible.
His words about the “Kingdom” are everywhere pregnant. It is “(α) spiritual (β) apocalyptic” (Stevens, p. 72). The scholars who, as Ritschl and Wellhausen treat it as solely present are just as much mistaken as those who, with Meyer, Weiss and Bousset, regard it as wholly future. Of the latter class Wernle, the following of whose words, however, so far as they go, are right. “From the beginning to the end of His ministry, not merely at the close (as in 19:11, 22:18), when He might be deemed disappointed as to His mission (Isa. 49:44Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God. (Isaiah 49:4)) the future is before the Lord” (“Beginnings of Christianity,” p.61). As to ties present, mystic, by the Expositor described as “moral,” sense of the term (Col. 1:1313Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: (Colossians 1:13)), cf. note on verse 20 below, and Charles, p. 318. in connection with 11: 20, 16:16, and 17:21. The term is first met with in the “Wisdom of Solomon,” 10:10, and appears also in Psalms of Solomon, 17:4. For its use in the Targums, see Dolman, “Words of Jesus,” p. 91f.
In the hands of Augustine, unhappily, the term acquired for medieval theologians identity with “Catholic Church”: see his “City of God,” and cf. note on 8:1. A further turn was given to its meaning by Protestants for whom it came to denote “the life of the redeemed after death,” or, as the idea, was expressed by Martineau, and rightly rejected by him, “the future stale of the righteous,” in the same sense (“Endeavors after the Christian Life,” p. 218).
The perpetual use of this petition, from the Apostolic age to our own time, is of itself evidence that, the Church in its truly healthiest mood never ceased to believe in what is now called “the eschatological background” of the Gospels. (cf. note 546); and so, not even when Augustine sought to establish an identity of Church and Kingdom, from which misconception such an influential scholar as Wellhausen has not been emancipated. Prof. Mackintosh has written that the eschatological cast of our Gospels “could not be seen clearly till modern scholarship arose” (“Christian Ethics,” p. 76), which is correct in the sense that ecclesiastical obscurantism prevailed until, not in Germany during,’ the past few years, but in this country, early Patristic interpretation of the “Kingdom,” stripped of its extravagance, was reaffirmed eighty years ago. This was in connection with the quickening among British Christians of the Church’s Hope of the “Second Coming” of the Lord, in the light, not of learned theological disquisitions, but of effect being given to spiritual truth, seen in life and practice governed by Scripture alone. One may trust that the present trend of thought in Germany will receive like impulse; it will be so if the atmosphere of the Gemeinschaften prevail over that of the academical, Seminars.
The various Scriptural aspects of the “Kingdom,” besides that of its relation to the “Gospel” already touched upon (chapter 8., sub init.; cf. note on 18:16f.), will be developed in successive notes on verse 20 of the present chapter, 12:31, 47f., 14:14, 17:20ff., 18:16f., 24ff. 21:36, 22: 16ff. The attention once given to the doctrine of the CHURCH seems now being transferred to that of the KINGDOM. This is none too soon; for the latter topic provides “the key of knowledge” (cf. 11:52 with Matt. 23:1313But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. (Matthew 23:13)). Again, Matt. 13: 52 cannot apply to the “Church,” which is a purely New Testament disclosure (Eph. 3:55Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; (Ephesians 3:5)). The absurdity of Rome’s application of the “keys” in Matt. 16:1919And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:19) to the Church is palpable.
The true doctrine of the Kingdom is the most effective instrument in the hands of any Christian scribe who would really strive to serve the present generation, perplexed with so many problems, ecclesiastical and social.
283 Verse 3. — “Give,” δίδου present; whilst; Matthew has δός, aorist, as appropriate to σήμερον, there.
“Us.” The plural, Dr. John Lightfoot says, was used by Jews in their pricate prayers, as excluding any idea of the petitioner being apart from the congregation (“Works,” vi., p. 426; xi., 1043).
“Needed,” ἐπιούσιος. “Daily” (A.V.) came from the Vulgate. The word here is quite distinct from that found in James 2:1515If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, (James 2:15). Origen states that, ἐπιούσιος was used nowhere else in Jewish literature. The Expositor (see his special pamphlet on “The Lord’s Prayer, so-called,” p. 29) follows the Peschito Syriac— as did Suidas, followed by Reuss, Godet, Arnold Meyer, etc. — taking it to mean deficient. Cf. Prov. 30:88Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: (Proverbs 30:8), which Delitzsch has followed in his Hebrew New Testament. The Syrsin has “continual” (amîna): cf. John 11:2727She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. (John 11:27). For the light thrown by the various Syriac versions on time actual Aramaic word used by our Lord, see Paper of Margoliouth in Expositor. April, 1910.
The Hebrew “Gospel of the Nazarenes” had mahar, “of tomorrow,” with which must he ranged the view taken by Erasmus, Grotius, Bengel, De Wette, Meyer, Bishop. Lightfoot (“A Fresh Revision,” etc.), H. Holtzmann, with most modern scholars, that the form is derivable from ἐπιοῦσα, in the sense of, for the coming day. Olshausen and Stier, whom Plumptre followed, understood spiritual’ food.
284 “Bring us not into temptation,” as the Spirit did JESUS (4:1).
285 As to SIN and the initial forgiveness of sins, see note on 24:47, and a pamphlet by the present writer (same publisher). With the present passage. cf. of course, Matt. 18:2525But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. (Matthew 18:25), and see Saphir on the Lord’s Prayer, Lect. XIII.; also Sermons of Augustus lime (vol. ii) and H., Melvill (vol. i.).
If the disciples ever offered this prayer during the period of the Lord’s ministry, it could not hare been in His Name: see John 16:2424Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:24). Whately contends that Christians do now implicitly so use it, as to which see IV. Kelly’s remarks in his special pamphlet (s. tit) “It was intended for those who were true believers, but for whom redemption was yet prospective, and to whom the Holy Ghost had not been given” (p. 21 p. 23). Reference may be made also to Bruce, “Training of the Twelve,” where it is described as “for spiritual minors, for Christians in the crude state of Divine life” (p. 51).
Some happy remarks on grounds alleged for its disuse have been made from the usual point of view by Dr. Thirtle, in his Paper entitled “Form and Substance” (“Christian,” 20th Jan., 1910). Much of the criticism bestowed upon it does but illustrate Luther’s description of the Prayer as “one of the greatest of Christian martyrs.”
That it was not meant as a liturgical formula, the different wording in the two Gospels containing it should suggest to all intelligent readers: see Meyer and cf. Harnack, p. 64f. This difference of scope and form in Matthew and Luke, J. Weiss (on Matthew, p. 286) speaks of as “striking a death-blow to belief in Verbal Inspiration.” If such a thing were possible for critics of his school, it could only be by way of mechanical uniformity: the difference between Divine and human vanishes for them.
In defense of a written form of words for congregational prayer, Archbishop Whately made use of a curious argument in a “Letter to a Clergyman of the Diocese of Dublin” (1837). From our Lord’s words in Matt. 18:1919Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 18:19), as to agreement about petitions made, he extracted an implication of exclusive use of precomposed prayers (p. 8f). Christians, however, who use extemporaneous prayer alone, outside of conventional prayers from Nonconformist pulpits, habitually so agree as to subjects of intended prayer. There is nothing in our Lord’s statement governing the language of such petitions. These who approve add their “Amen.” As to their being, according to the Archbishop, merely “hearers” while not themselves voicing the mind of the company, a priori impressions are rectified by experience.
The New Testament is generally supposed to be silent as to any use being made, whether privately or publicly, of this formula, either during the lifetime of the Lord or in the period of Apostolic ministry. No answer has naturally been found to Bingham’s inquiry, “When did its use begin” (“Antiqq.,”13:7). It is first met with, outside the gospel of Matthew and Luke, in the Didactic (§ 8), and here in the Matthean form, with an injunction that it shall be said thrice daily. But as late as the time of Justin Martyr (Apol., 1:67) extemporaneous prayer (supra) was certainly recognized at celebration of the Lord’s. Supper (ὅση δύναμις), translated in Pusey’s Library of the Fathers by “with all his strength.” By the third century this formula had become “legitimate and ordinary” prayer.
Cf. Exposition by Maclaren, i. pp. 322-325. Reference should also be made, for comparison with this prayer, to the Prayer Book of British Jews (Amidah), pp. 44-54.
286 Verse 7. — See Schor, p. 25.
257 Verse 8. — Cf. Mark 11:2424Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11:24). Abrahams so vs, with reference to the Rabbinic idea of prayer, “The man who prayed expecting an answer was, regarded as arrogant and sinful”! (p. 147).
287a Verse 9. — “This is the Magna Charta of prayer”
288 Verse 11. — “Shall give,” i.e., in answer to him (ἐπιδώσει).
289 Verse 13. — “Being,” to begin with (ὐπάρχων). This word is characteristically Pauline: it occurs again in 16:11, 23, and 23:50. As to the doctrine of “Original Sin,” see note 617 below.
290 “Father who is of heaven,” ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. Cf. 1 Cor. 15:1717And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. (1 Corinthians 15:17), and Weiss, “Theology of the New Testament,” p. 93; also his “Sources of Luke’s Gospel,” p. 73. Wesley notes the gradation: friend; father, GOD.
291 “Holy Spirit.” Syrsin has “good things.” Harnack (as Wellhansen) speaks of Luke’s change of words as capricious (ἄγαθα), e.g., his, fondness for “spirit” (“Sayings,” p. 10); but cf. verse 20, where our Evangelist has “finger” (δακτύλῳ) for Matthew’s “spirit” (πνεύματι), as shown on the next page Harnack’s own book.
Our Lord’s word, “good-things,” recorded by Matthew, seems to belong to a different time or connection from “Spirit” here. As Dr. Campbell Morgan has said, the former was spoken by Him in the character of Jewish Messiah (“The Spirit of God,” p. 172); but the same writer seems to have missed the point p. 94) in Luke’s record, which regards efficiency in service, and Dial now, as well as in time yet to come, independently of dispensation. The esteemed minister of Westminster Chapel is right in guarding such passages from the interpretation put upon them by those who support the idea of a “second blessing.” But is there any warrant for asserting that the disciples did never act upon the Lord’s statement? The same might as well be said of the formula, of verses 2-4 in the immediate context.
The omission of the article indicates that a faculty rather than the personal Spirit is spoken of (cf. Middleton on Matt. 1:1818Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. (Matthew 1:18), p. 126; Acts 19:22He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. (Acts 19:2); 1 Cor. 12:31, 14:1, and Phil. 1:1919For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, (Philippians 1:19)). As to gifts of the Holy Spirit already spoken of in Isaiah 11:22And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; (Isaiah 11:2), see “Catholic Catechism,” p. 93, where these are set out.
Warner has described the Holy Spirit as “operative in the subconscious area” (p. 284).
291a “Ask”: “The Son was given unasked, the Spirit to be given must be implored” (Neil).
293 Verse 15. — “Beelzebub.” The final letter is not shown as b in any Greek MS., but is derived from the Vulgate. The critical reading is “Beelzeboul.” So in Matt. 12:24-2724But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. 25And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand: 26And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? 27And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges. (Matthew 12:24‑27); Mark 3:2222And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils. (Mark 3:22). As to the meaning of this name, see 2 Kings 1:66And they said unto him, There came a man up to meet us, and said unto us, Go, turn again unto the king that sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that thou sendest to inquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. (2 Kings 1:6), and cf. Dalman, “Aramaic Grammar,” p. 137.
294 Verse 19. — For the use made by Carpenter of these words, see p. 367 of his “Bible in the Nineteenth Century.”
296 “The Kingdom of God is come, upon you.” For φθάνειν, cf. 1 Thess. 4:1515For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. (1 Thessalonians 4:15), where the word clearly has the classical sense of “to forestall,” “anticipate,” whilst in Rom. 9:3131But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. (Romans 9:31) it means “to reach.” Here it may have the first meaning, “to come unexpectedly” (J. Weiss: “to break,” as the dawn), but a few writers labor under the impression, aided by the fact that Heaven and God were to some extent interchangeable in the language of the period (ch. 15:21), that Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven are equivalent terms (so H. Holtzmann). But the Kingdom of Heaven is not a mere “euphemism” (as Selbie, p. 85) for Kingdom of God. These are not co-extensive: see note 21 Mark (p. 245). The “Kingdom of Heaven,” as Allen states (on Matt. 12:28, 21:43), is a regularly eschatological term. It represents that which is described in expository literature as the “Millennium,” from Rev. 20:44And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4). Cf. the Lord’s “heavenly kingdom” in 2 Tim. 4:1818And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (2 Timothy 4:18), and the administration of the “fullness of times” (Eph. 1:1010That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: (Ephesians 1:10)). In Matt. 13. the Kingdom acquires its heavenly character from the King being there, regarded as having returned to heaven. “The Kingdom of God” extends beyond the Messianic reign, being of endless duration (1 Cor. 15:2828And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:28)).
298 Verse 21 ff. — The late Count Tolstoi, in conversation with Dr. F. W. Baedeker (Memoir, p. 207), remarked that there would be no prisons — Baedeker had been visiting convicts as a missionary — if people were rightly taught; to which the rejoinder was, that so long as there is sin in the world there will be prisons; and this passage was quoted, of which the Russian writer, who has produced a book on “The Teaching of Jesus,” avowed himself ignorant! “When everybody,” he writes, “has understood the true teaching, then evil and temptations will come to an end”! (§ 39 ad fin., E. T., p. 85).
299 Verse 23. — Cf. Matt. 12:3030He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. (Matthew 12:30). Just as the first part of this “saying” regards every man’s individual relation to the Person of Christ, the second concerns His Work (Hahn).
The principle derived by the Expositor from this verse is now better understood than at the time his comment was written; but there is still room for much improvement with regard to it in the Church “militant.”
300 Verse 21f — Martensen considers that the use which Luke makes of this logion bears upon seeming conversion (“Individual Ethics,” E. T., p.152). “An unclean spirit, e.g., lust, is gone out. The man assumes a robe of piety; the unclean spirit returns in another form, e.g., pride and censoriousness.” It has been suggested that the exchange of Protestantism for Catholicism has often the character described in 2 Pet. 2:2020For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. (2 Peter 2:20)ff.
Dr. Arnold has preached on verse 25 (“Sermons on the Christian Life,” p.156).
There is a sermon on this verse by Isaac Williams.
303 Verses 29-32. — The attitude of critics towards Typology may be gathered from Schmidt, pp. 55-61. “The critical study of the Hebrew Scriptures has eliminated types.” “The reason why modern learning has abandoned typology is ... it can find no place in history for many persons... regarded as types.” So complete has become the confusion between the method employed by our Lord and his Apostles and the Patristic allegorizing. People who claim to be “scientific” may be expected to live up to their reputation, which is too often, however, a castle of cardboard. Evolution is supposed to have made Typology impossible!
304 Verse 30ff. — “A queen.” “Men of Nineveh.” The Expositor (as Westcott, “Some Lessons, etc.,” p. 55) preferred the indefinite form of rendering.
305 Matthew, whose special use of the prophet’s adversity is sometimes belittled, has also preserved the preaching of Jonah as the sign (12:41).
306 Verse 33. — “In secret” (W. H., κρύπτην, or, as Blass and Weiss, κρυπτήν), “in a vault.” See Spurgeon’s Sermon, 2109.
307 Verse 35f.― “The light... in thee.” Grubb: “The light within is the power of a self-conscious person to enter into communion with God” (op. cit., p. 93: see the whole of chapter 7, and on the relation of such light to the conscience, chapter 12 of his book). Cf. John 11:1010But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. (John 11:10) with Gore, “The Creed of the Christian,” p. 38f.
Robert South preached on verse 35.
308 Verse 37. — “Dine.” This was the ἄριστον, or midday meal (breakfast, luncheon): see Acts 10:99On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: (Acts 10:9)f., and cf. Josephus, “Life,” sec. 54. For the δεῖπνον (dinner, supper), see chapter 14.
309 Verse 38. — “Washed (American Revs'. ‘bathed himself') before dinner.” Cf. Mark 7:44And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. (Mark 7:4), and see Bennett on Mishna, etc., p. 33f.
310 Verse 39. — The PHARISEES. As to this party, see Bennett, chapter ix., and paper by Box in Churchman, September, 1911. The Expositor (cf. his pamphlet on the Talmud) here sides with Farrar and Edersheim, against Deutsch and Montefiore. On Deutsch’s own showing (“Literary Remains.” p, 29) some language of the Talmud about them is just as severe as any the Gospels.
See Augustine’s Sermon in op. cit., vol. i., p. 431.
311 Verse 41.― “What ye have,” ἐνόντα, as taken by Godet and Bishop Basil Jones. Whilst Wordsworth explains by “hearts,” the R.V. text males the mean souls (cf. Matt. 23:2525Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. (Matthew 23:25)ff.) the margin (rejected by W. Kelly in his “Bible Treasury” review), the contents of the cups, which was the view of De Wette, after Theophylact. And so B. Weiss. Cf. Expositor, March, 1909 (p. 282f, Papyri).
312 Verse 42 ff.―The woes Matthew has assigned to the Passion narrative.
313 “Love of God” (cf. 10:27, and note there). Save as in John 5:4242But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. (John 5:42) (cf. 8:42 of that Gospel), this is peculiar to Luke. In Matthew, “mercy” and “faith.” Augustine said that, “one can do anything if he love God.” Cf. Jas. 1:2525But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. (James 1:25). Thomas à Kempis “If thou didst know the whole Bible by heart what would that profit thee without the love of God?”
As to this element in the Jewish Chassidism of the eighteenth century, sea Abrahams, p. 76. For the Old Testament basis, cf. Deut. 6:55And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deuteronomy 6:5) and 30:20. The Divine claim of love is characteristic of Judaism and Christianity amongst religious systems, as to which see Bettex, “The Book of Truth,” p. 676. On the love of God in the Synoptic teaching, see Stalker, “The Ethic of Jesus,” chapter 10.
314 Verse 44 f.―Cf. Matt. 23:2727Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. (Matthew 23:27). According to the Received Text, the “lawyers” seem to distinguish themselves from the “scribes”; but the critical text omits “scribes” here. There can be no doubt that “scribe” was used of any man of learning. Cf. note on 10:25.
315 Verses 49-51.―Cf. Matt. 23:3434Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: (Matthew 23:34). This passage is considered by Alford to be a paraphrase of 2 Chron. 24:18-2218And they left the house of the Lord God of their fathers, and served groves and idols: and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this their trespass. 19Yet he sent prophets to them, to bring them again unto the Lord; and they testified against them: but they would not give ear. 20And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you. 21And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord. 22Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The Lord look upon it, and require it. (2 Chronicles 24:18‑22); by Lindsay, as a paraphrase of Prov. 1:20-3120Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: 21She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, 22How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? 23Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. 24Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; 25But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: 26I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; 27When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. 28Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: 29For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: 30They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. 31Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. (Proverbs 1:20‑31). Cf. Job 12:13, 28:23; Prov. 8:22-3122The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. 23I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. 24When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. 25Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: 26While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. 27When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: 28When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: 29When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: 30Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; 31Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. (Proverbs 8:22‑31); Wisdom of Solomon, 7:27; Rom. 11:3333O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! (Romans 11:33), and 1 Cor. 1:2424But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:24); also note 125 above (Luke 5:1717And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them. (Luke 5:17)).
Harnack supposes that an apocryphal Jewish writing is quoted (“Sayings,” p. 103).
“Hath been poured out,” ἐκκεχυμένον. If ἐκχυννόμενον (Tisch.) be read, future bloodshed will be included (Weymouth).
Observe the entail of hereditary guilt attaching to the Jewish people, forerunners of the “historical church” in a like connection (Anderson, “The Bible or the Church,” p. 100).
316 Verse 52.― “The key of knowledge,” generally supposed to refer to the symbol of authority handed to new rabbis by the Sanhedrin when commissioning them. See, however, note on verse 2.
317 Verse 53.― “To make him speak,” ἀποστοματίζειν. McClellan: “to urge Him to answer offhand.”